High-tech is next step for textiles
American industry survivors join advanced fabrics project
Warwick Mills shows the kind of innovative know-how common among American textile companies that have survived the fierce global competition of recent years.
The small private company in New Hampshire has climbed steadily up the economic ladder of its industry to produce specialized fabrics that weave in ceramics, metals and fibreglass. These high-value fabrics are used in products like safety gloves for industrial workers and body armour for the police and military.
Now, Warwick Mills is joining the U.S. Defence Department, universities including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and nearly 50 other companies in an ambitious $320-million (U.S.) project to push the U.S. textile industry into the digital age. Key is a technical ingredient: embedding a variety of tiny semiconductors and sensors into fabrics that can see, hear, communicate, store energy, warm or cool a person or monitor the wearer’s health.
“These would be high-tech offerings that change the game for the companies involved and for the industry,” said Charles Howland, president and chief engineer at Warwick.
The advanced-fabrics project represents a new frontier for the Internet of Things.
The term describes putting sensors and computing in all manner of physical objects — jet engines, power generators, cars, farm equipment and thermostats, among others — to measure and monitor everything from machines in need of repair to traffic patterns. This latest initiative, Advanced Functional Fabrics of America, is intended to create a network of research and development, design and manufacturing capabilities for the new fabrics. The products of this emerging field are being called “functional fabrics,” “connected fabrics,” “textile devices” and “smart garments.”
The field requires contributions from disciplines like materials science, electrical engineering, software development, human-computer interaction, advanced manufacturing and fashion design.
Clothes filled with sensors and chips could give new meaning to the term wearables, now mainly wristbound digital devices.
The defence department is investing to develop new combat uniforms that might communicate and change colour, signalling friend or uniforms filled with optical sensors to make a soldier invisible to an enemy’s nightvision goggles.
For some companies, the functional fabrics are a potential add-on market. For others, they could disrupt their businesses.
The stakes are high for VF Corp., one of the world’s largest apparel makers, whose brands include Wrangler and Nautica. Until about two years ago, VF did not really have a research-and-development operation, said Marty Lawrence, a general manager for innovation. But eying trends in the industry and technology, VF has hired scientists and set up four innovation centres in the United States that focus on areas including new fabrics for jeans and cognitive science.
The functional fabrics project, Lawrence said, represents “the future of apparel.”